Other than the Czarists and Bolsheviks wanting to kick some Capitalist ass, the biggest news today as far as I'm concerned is the untimely death of one of my favorite ex-NBA players. Kevin Duckworth died at age 44.
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I saw several kids walking to the corner to catch the school bus, and each of them was wearing a backpack; actually they were large backpacks with enough storage space to tote tucker for a six month hike on the Appy Trail. Being big on investigating absolutely anything of little consequence, I asked the kids what they were carrying that was so heavy it caused them to lean forward for balance as they walked. In a nutshell, it seems they carry a lot of personal items, along with their school books and thin notebooks. Personal items were anything from a comb, a hanky or tissue pack, keys to their houses, snacks, lunch sandwiches and small cans of fruit or pudding, a tote-type rain poncho, small handheld electronc game devices, and even cell phones. Didn't see any weapons.
Back in the day, we carried our notebooks and school books in our hands, at least the ones of us that intended on doing homework did so. If we took our lunches to school from home, they were invaribly packed in brown paper bags, or "pokes" as we called them. We had no cups of fruit or pudding, nor did we carry ponchos. A small electronic device back then may have been a radio the size of a bread box, and it certainly wasn't portable. Most of us didn't have telephones in our homes, much less ones for our non-existent backpacks. All the boys—and some of the tom-boy girls—went armed. All the years I went to school, I never knew or heard of a kid cutting another kid with the folding pocket knives we carried. We traded them; we played mumblety-peg with them, and we would sometimes throw them at targets. We darned sure didn't consider them as being weapons of mass hysteria! As for the backpacks, not a one of us owned enough personal stuff to even half fill one of them.
"Yessir, these modern day kids just don't know how to live," sez this old geezer!
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